CHAPTER 11

About the time the rain started, Jay walked up.

We both changed into rain gear, and he helped me gather bark for the hooch. Then we sat down for the appraisal, with hoods to keep the water out of our eyes.

He said I had long suits in mental and physical endurance, flexibility, stewardship and leadership, but a drop on the graph when it came to "blessing others."

I nodded and told him I had just been thinking that. He said it was nothing to hang my head and cry about, just something to work on. The same drive I put into my long suits would work on my short suits too.

Jay left, the rain got heavier, and I decided to build my fire. For a three-minute fire, there was no need to gather much wood. I used a handful of pine needles and a few finger-size sticks. Then I wrote down everything about myself I didn't like, tore the paper out of my notebook, laid it on top of the sticks and torched it. I don't remember what I wrote, but it quickly turned to smoke.

I put out the fire and worked on the hooch, adding more sticks and needles and bark and, at Jay's suggestion, draping my poncho over the top.

I crawled inside, and not a drop was hitting me. It was just past 4 and seemed to be getting dark. I didn't want to waste daylight sleeping, but the wind was cold and I knew how warm the sleeping bag would be. And the pitter-patter of the rain on the poncho was making me sleepy. I took off all my clothes and crawled inside my bag. As the rain picked up, I complimented myself on my timing.

Ten minutes later I woke up to find my chest and stomach drenched. I looked at the rock face I was snuggled against. Rivulets of water were running down its surface and spurting onto my sleeping bag.

I lay there another five minutes. I was wet, but I wasn't cold. I was tempted to go right back to sleep. But I figured I would probably wake up with hypothermia.

I got up, pulled on long johns and a rain suit, collected more bark and arranged it along the crack where the hooch met the rock.

After an hour or so the rain stopped, and I pulled out the bag and opened it up on top of the rock. I sat on the rock, writing and hoping the bag would dry out some before I had to get back in it. The sky was varying shades of dark gray. A chorus of crickets serenaded me. The thunder sounded like it was rolling away from me now.

It started raining again at 3 a.m. I got up at 5, when I saw that my notebook was wet. I stuffed it inside my long johns and rain pants. It was the last day of the duo. They would be coming to pick me up sometime today.

We were to demolish our hooches before we left, no fair leaving them up ready-made for the next victims. I enjoyed taking it apart because it gave me something to do.

The rain didn't stop all day, and with no hooch to cover me I couldn't read or write. I ended up walking around in a circle with a circumference of maybe 100 paces, praying out loud for every soul I could think of, singing every hymn and reciting every Bible verse I knew.

I was all out of metaphors. I was hungry, tired, wet, bored and eager to be picked up, though I tried not to focus on it. Now I was learning about ... patience, that's it, patience.

I had just spent 36 hours exposed to the elements in mostly miserable conditions, and I had yet to feel truly miserable. If my long suit was being tough and my short suit was being compassionate, maybe it was good for me to feel my toughness pushed to its limits, to see how easily these conditions could depress anybody. I prayed for my LEAD-mates, trying to be selfless. But mostly I wished they would hurry up and get here.

They came in their own good time. We hiked back to the LEAD lodge, where we were fed our first meal in 48 hours.

Dried apples, crackers and peanut butter.

It was the best meal I ever had.

© Karl Kahler 1999